I tweeted him to get help with a very simple question, and he blew me away when he not only responded immediately, but followed up by email and answered some less simple questions!

The biggest (and potentially most heartbreaking) takeaway that I got had to do with analytics and blog subscriptions.

I’ve told you before:

If you’re hooked up with an ad network like Foodbuzz, BlogHer, Federated Media, etc., you are most likely paid based on pageviews. If someone views your post in a feed reader (Google Reader) or by email subscription, you will not get CPM credit for that view.

And now, Avinash takes it one step further.

I asked:

If someone reads your blog post in a feed reader (Google Reader), does that count as a visit, a pageview, a subscriber or a combination?

Avinash answered:

It does not.

If you have a blog then it is extremely advisable to use a solution like Feedburner to serve your feeds and, of course, get your analytics data. As an example see the data for my blog for the last few days. You can see views and subs and all that.

There is one exception to this. If someone clicks on your feed (say in Google Reader) and you are using Feedburner and they come to your blog then those visits are tagged with campaign parameter and are tracked as coming to your site from your feed. You’ll find this data in your Google Analytics Campaign reports.

(Katy note: I burn all my feeds through Feedburner and strongly advise you to do the same! Once you do, be sure to change all your RSS links to the new URL)

(Katy note #2: While subscriptions don’t count toward pageviews or other monetized analytics, I definitely do not advise you to take off your RSS or subscribe-by-email links. They not only ensure that your fans will come back to read and share your content, they are possibly the most important tools for building trust and relationships with your readers, which can be much more valuable than a simple pageview)

One more excellent piece of advice from Avinash (that I am now using to track keywords to my website) came from a question you posed. So again,

I asked:

Is it possible to use the Keywords section of Google Analytics to determine what post the search led to? For example: if a keyword listed on GA is “healthy recipes,” how can we tell which specific post was linked to?

Avinash answered:

Go to the report for that keyword. Click on the little box you see called None. You’ll see something like the [image posted below]. Click on Landing Page and Boom (!) you have what you want.

What other questions do you have about analytics, social media or anything else? Leave me a comment or submit it through my Ask Me page!

About Katy

Katy Widrick is a multimedia producer and online marketing consultant at MakeMediaOver.com. A NASM-certified personal trainer and AFAA-certified group exercise instructor, she writes about healthy living in a hectic world -- a balance between fitness and friendships, all built through social media. But her favorite job is mom to two beautiful girls.